Globe accelerates RE adoption
By MYRNA M. VELASCO
Telecommunication giant Globe is scaling up the integration of renewable energy (RE) across the chain of operations, in a bid to have a clean and green source of power supply for its facilities.
Just recently, the company announced that it took another leap for RE shift on its key facility in Quezon City, its 14th core business site in Luzon that will run on RE.
“Globe continuously pursues partnerships and innovation to reduce carbon emissions in its network and to achieve net zero GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions by 2050,” the telecom company said.
The Ayala-led firm is joining the rest of its affiliate-companies in the conglomerate as well as the bandwagon of “woke corporate entities’ in the world that are now advancing their ‘net zero’ goals by mid-century, in line with the climate diplomacy pacts cemented in last year’s 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland and the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Aside from its newly minted ‘green site’ in Quezon City, Globe said its energy-intensive facilities that are now drawing electricity supply from RE sources are those in Makati, Mandaluyong, San Juan, Cavite, Tarlac, Cebu, and Taguig.
According to Rizza Maniego-Eala, chief finance officer of Globe, the company believes that environmental awareness is "something critical for ushering progress towards a sustainable future, and Globe is dedicated to continuing to advocate these ideals.”
She added “our vision to go beyond business is demonstrated by the addition of more sites that are proactive in addressing climate change threats.”
In the thriving synergy of the energy sector with the telecommunications industry, Globe said it is “committed to set science-based targets to achieve climate security.”
Globe narrated it started taking off from its decarbonization journey in 2019 by its trailblazing initiative of purchasing RE for its power needs from retail electricity suppliers (RES), a competitive marketplace of energy supply procurement facilitated by the Retail Competition and Open Access (RCOA) policy of the restructured power industry.
Through the power retailing structure of the electricity market, contestable customers that are typically in the high-demand category of businesses and industries can take the head of the table when it comes to negotiating for their power purchase agreements (PPAs) or contracts with their preferred suppliers at a price that they will opt for, and on an energy source of their choice, primarily renewable energy.
On an all-inclusive basis, Globe expounded that it has decidedly “included sustainability criteria as part of its technical evaluation for RES,” with it emphasizing that “sustainability forms more than 50% of the technical criteria and helps identify which RES can supply a facility’s electricity demand with clean energy that can be confirmed with Gold Standard-Verified Emission Reduction (VER) certificates or equivalent carbon certificates.”
The telecom company expressed hopes that its patronage for RE use could “encourage more investments towards clean energy.”
The firm takes pride in being the first and only publicly-listed Philippine company that is now on the roll of the Science-Based Target initiative, an effort spearheaded by the United Nations and other global organizations which “pushes for corporate participation in critical climate action and enables companies to align with trajectories that will lead to net-zero emissions.”